Keeping the Peace: Temptations of authority

Thin resources can allow abuse of power

Oct. 26, 2013

Police recruits listen to instructor Greg Williams during an ethics class as part of the South Dakota law enforcement certification course in Pierre. Since 2003, 49 South Dakota officers have been decertified. / Joe Ahlquist / Argus Leader

Written by

Rural South Dakota faces unique challenges when it comes to law enforcement. Oct. 20: The challenges of finding and keeping officers. With a special look at Bennett County. Oct. 23: Rural police face real dangers. With a special look at Hanson County. Today: When police hires go bad — a look at decertification. And a profile of Douglas County. Wednesday: How safe is your community? With a look at Hand County.

More

ADVERTISEMENT

In the rural outback that is Highmore, maybe 50 miles east of Pierre, the murderer among the 795 townspeople also was the police chief.

The thief who stole $4,000 and a gun in the West River town of Kadoka was a deputy sheriff.

The sexual deviant on the Rosebud Reservation, the predator who assaulted a 14-year-old girl in his custody, was supposed to wield the power and sacred trust of a tribal law enforcement officer.

Trained and certified to uphold the law, they broke it instead. And among South Dakota’s law enforcement fraternity during the past decade, they are not alone.

An Argus Leader analysis found at least 49 instances since 2003 where police officers, sheriff’s deputies, highway patrolmen, 911 dispatchers and tribal officers, among others, either voluntarily relinquished their law enforcement certification or had it revoked.

While some handed in their badges under innocuous circumstances — simply deciding to switch professions, for example — others were caught in a web of power gone awry and temptation. They stole. They embezzled. They faced accusations ranging from possessing pornography to using drugs to stupidity under the influence.

“I’ve seen anything from a decertification because a law enforcement officer shot a road sign to an officer who had a legitimate injury that turned into an addiction to prescription drugs. I’ve seen decertification for lying to one’s boss,” Attorney General Marty Jackley said.

What that says about public safety, particularly in rural areas where it already can be a challenge to attract quality law enforcement candidates, is difficult to assess. What is clear is that 31 of the 49 decertifications involved individuals in departments with fewer than 10 officers.

Jackley insisted that the men and women wearing the badge in small-town South Dakota are every bit as dedicated and skilled as those in the bigger cities. Still, he acknowledged that fewer eyes in smaller departments can play a role in the temptations and activities that bring officers down.

(Page 2 of 5)

“Some of it is, in larger departments there are more checks and balances,” he said. “There’s less opportunity to do something intentionally wrong ... where you have more eyes looking at something and the ability to catch something.”

Sioux Falls doesn’t have perfect officers in its department, either, Police Chief Doug Barthel said. But its manpower and level of oversight probably thwart some of the problems smaller departments might encounter.

“If you’ve got an officer that’s bent on doing something illegal, they’re going to do it whether they’re in a larger department or a small one,” Barthel said.

With fewer eyes upon him, Leola Police Chief John Grabowska reportedly stole seized drug money and embezzled from the volunteer fire department, which ultimately cost him his certification in 2012. That same year, Wagner Police Chief Jim Chaney turned in his badge after hiding his girlfriend’s drug needles at the police station. And in 2010, Walworth County deputy sheriff Jeremiah Paul stole $500 from a department safe.

Each of those cases resonate with Canon City, Colo., Police Chief Paul Schultz, who has done management training with small law enforcement agencies across the country. He also has sat as a decertification hearing officer with Colorado’s Peace Officers Standards and Training commission.

As in South Dakota, the majority of decertifications in Colorado come out of small and rural law enforcement agencies, Schultz said. Most involve what he calls “poor choices,” such as drugs, use of force and sexual misconduct.

That follows the pattern revealed in a study by the Mississippi-based National Institute of Ethics. That study, looking at data between 1990 and 1995, found that the top offenses for which officers lost certification included making false statements, larceny, sex offenses other than rape, battery, driving under the influence and excessive use of force.

Schultz said he knows cases of officers who are solicited for sex by prisoners or others they come in contact with on duty and then act on it. He cites a case, too, of a deputy sheriff in Colorado suffering from depression who used drugs that had been confiscated from a person under arrest.

(Page 3 of 5)

“I guess I would add a separate category and would make that domestic violence,” he said. “We do see trends with officers who fall into that category. Again, poor decisions.”

Though a paucity of supervision within small departments “certainly plays a factor,” Schultz and others say ethics is a much more significant issue for them.

“To me it’s more of a training issue,” he said. “One of the definitions of ethics is doing the right thing when no one is watching. Even in a small, rural agency, with no supervisor on duty, if an officer has training in ethics, they would know to do the right thing even though no one is watching.”

Ethics training in South Dakota

In South Dakota, ethics education is part of the 13-week certification program officers go through at the Law Enforcement Training Center in Pierre. At the most recent training in August, certification coordinator Greg Williams worked through a variety of ethics scenarios with the candidates.

Is it OK for a cop to steal, Williams asked his class? “No,” they responded in unison.

“What if it’s just a little money? What if it’s 20 bucks?” Williams asked.

“That’s where it starts,” came one reply.

Is it OK to be indifferent or uncaring about rules or laws as a police officer, Williams asked? Is it OK for a cop to misuse his or her discretion? And why talk about ethics at all, he said.

One of the candidates responded, “Because cops have temptations that the general public does not.” Power corrupts, said another. “We’re in a position where it could become a problem,” said a third.

Law enforcement understands the temptations that are out there, said Staci Eggert, director of the South Dakota Sheriffs’ Association. That’s why her group created a peer assistance program in 2010 that matches experienced sheriffs with those who are new to the job and learning about the responsibilities and duties.

They also have “offered assistance to sheriffs when we have had issues brought to our attention of behavior which may be unbecoming,” Eggert said.

(Page 4 of 5)

Her group is working with the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Highway Patrol and police chiefs as well to create an online academy that focuses on ethics and leadership. That should prove particularly beneficial to officers in smaller agencies who can’t get away for weeklong workshops often held out of state, Eggert said.

Certainly, ethics training and peer programming won’t necessarily stop the situation in Highmore where Police Chief Ken Huber shot his wife to death in October 2007, or on the Rosebud Reservation, where tribal officer Dan Kettell took an intoxicated juvenile girl into custody in July 2008 and sexually assaulted her.

But there is more communities can do to vet candidates and protect themselves from the potential of unsavory or criminal cops, the experts say.

Vetting candidates

Police Chief Julio Medeiros in Martin said he knows government leaders in small towns complain that tight finances and manpower don’t always allow them to go beyond routine criminal background checks when looking at law enforcement candidates.

They should be but aren’t doing credit histories of candidates, Medeiros said. They aren’t going to where candidates grew up and asking questions of teachers and neighbors. They aren’t checking on their character in the communities where they lived 10 to 15 years ago.

“If you relax your standards, you’re going to get people who don’t belong in law enforcement,” Medeiros said.

“Unfortunately, in a lot of little towns, I think the attitude is, ‘I think this guy is a good guy; let’s hire him.’ They may be a decent person, but do they meet the qualifications to have that sacred trust?”

The selection process is the most critical component of personnel management in small law enforcement departments, said Police Chief Lou Dekmar in LaGrange, Ga., who like Schultz does leadership training for small departments across the country.

Unfortunately, many departments started relaxing their standards in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dekmar said, at a time when law enforcement found it difficult to recruit because private sector jobs were on fire as far as pay and benefits.

(Page 5 of 5)

“Because they reduced their standards, it’s been suggested that in the next 10 years or so, we’re going to see problems in law enforcement,” he said. “Those people selected who shouldn’t have been will be in middle management and leadership in police departments.”

Add to that the challenges smaller departments face because they can’t pay as much in salaries and benefits, or because of perceived or actual interference from elected officials, “and you see what the potential for problems can be,” Dekmar said.

“You think doing a good background investigation is expensive?” he said. “Try having a civil rights judgment against you. I think I read that the average civil rights judgment is $3.5 million in this country today.”

Effectively recruiting doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, Schultz said. Small towns and rural areas have a high quality of life to which people are drawn. Benefits such as health insurance can offset salary limitations, he said. And if the community has good schools — even access to, say, a wellness center — “recruiting good candidates ... can be done,” he said.

But again, Dekmar said, a background check and the perusal of the Internet to see what shows up on Google or Facebook is not enough to vet a candidate.

“Police are held to a different standard because of things they are permitted to do to our citizens,” he said.

“They can take children from you without warrant. They can take your property if they can show it was used for drugs or other actions. They can deprive you of your liberty. They can use deadly force if you resist. They can put a charge on you that, despite the fact there isn’t a good basis for it, you may have to explain the rest of your life.

“If you give that power willy nilly to anybody, you may have to explain the consequences of that. The confidence you lose in the community when you have one bad actor out there ... can be huge.”

There are places in South Dakota that understand that very well. Less than a year ago, Tea Police Chief Brian Ketterhagen resigned in the face of a DCI inquiry into alleged misconduct. After his resignation, Tea officials learned of a lawsuit in Wyoming alleging that the former chief maliciously withheld evidence in a cold case murder investigation that put a man in prison for three years.

Schultz and Dekmar say they don’t know the details of that case, or any of the others that might find themselves in front of South Dakota’s decertification board. But they know how it works — how officers leave their departments for disciplinary reasons, and how someone else hires them without doing the thorough checking that would include a call to their agencies.

In the profession of public safety, especially in the rural spaces of South Dakota where finding good professionals with a passion for protecting those they serve already is a challenge, that’s a call that should always be made, they say.

“Those who don’t make that call do so at their own peril,” Dekmar said. “After 27 years as a police chief, it’s my observation that communities generally get the police department they deserve based on who they elect, what their expectations are and how much work they put into trying to find the best candidates they can for the job.”